Question 1

Media Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In the narrative we establish the plot before and after the title sequence which goes against some of the usual conventions where the plot may be established after a title sequence, like in ‘Seven’.

In our two minute opening sequence the plot is established with a significant event before the title sequence and then a complication afterwards – the death of the main characters’ wife is the significant event while the blame of the husband for killing his own wife is the complication.

Our film was designed to be linear but with events that would confuse the audience, as our film is a psychological thriller so it needs situations like this to be successful, making it non linear because we used a flash-backs to add to the psychological confusion however, like in Shutter Island where Teddy Daniels experiences brief flashbacks to events before the time the main film is set, as we had an establishing shot at the beginning of the main character driving to the house.

With our camera angles, shot movement and positions of the camera we generally changed the angle, height and position of the camera to also add to the confusion to carry on the theme of a psychological thriller. This is something usually found in horror films, but they can and usually are incorporated into psychological thrillers to add a more tense atmosphere, which in turn would cause the audience to jump. However we used it as a device to build the tension in the atmosphere, which is something that is found often in the darker genres of film.  

With the continuity and editing, we did a good job in terms of creating a smooth film – there weren’t many jumps in the final cut. The pacing and rhythm of our two minute opening was quite fast but it wasn’t choppy (at least not until the changing of the font, where for some reason we couldn’t get the font in the exact size and place as we wanted it.)

In the background of our two minute opening, in the beginning, the diegetic sound from a free music download website under the title of dramatic piano; we chose this piece of music because it helps to create the atmosphere build. It adds impact to the opening scene, which was something we wanted to achieve since our full film would have been designed to be fast paced. In the scenes before and after the title sequence, the sound heard is diegetic. We did this to make the film seem more real in a way, to try and immerse the audience more. However, this could have been achieved through silence. We added a voice over at the beginning to show the emotion that the main character is feeling and to make it more personal; this would have an immediate effect on the audience.

The ‘costumes’ used in the two minute film opening were all things that we owned ourselves. We were given different roles to play and we tried to show this through our clothing; such as the police officers were wearing black trousers and a formal wear top to show they we undercover police officers. The location was one of our group members’ houses, where most of the full film would have been set. Though, it is not completely unusual as films like 127 Hours and Harry Potter is mainly set in one specific location.

The props used were all bought ourselves or they were things that we had on hand at the location.

The font used in the title sequence was bold. The size of the font was around 16, while the main title was around 36. We used an effect on Final Cut Express to add an effect to the font that made it separate from the centre and fade outwards from the origin position.

In our two minute opening we didn’t have many pieces of iconography due to the fact that it’s difficult to do this with psychological thrillers at the beginning and it is about building up the psychological aspects slowly, so we only got three pieces of iconography. One of these was the lighting – our film looked very dark when the tension was increasing as the main character walked up the stairs (this can be linked to mise-en-scene too).

We also filmed a shot where there was an empty space next to the main character. This is a typical convention seen in horror and psychological thriller films as the empty space is designed to make the audience wary of something that may or may not “jump in” or appear on screen.